Google is trying to take over the world buying everything remotely decent and investing in anything remotely worthy. It seems like nothing will ever stop or beat Google anymore. Looks like last night Google’s heads spent up - Routers reports that Google lost 13$ billions, in one short night. Ain’t summer nights HOT?
I would say it’s quite atypical for such a huge corporation to get such a huge loss. Maybe now, to cover up for the losses they would need to sell YouTube and FeedBurner? 
Yesterday, nowg.net’s new design and logo went online…
I was thinking of some good logo (it’s about time to make one, and speaking of which toptut.com is in need of one too!) and wanted it to be both web 2.0 and memorable, not yet another bold text with a white stroke around it. I am really satisfied with the colors and the idea,it turned out just the way I wanted and hopefully will help me to establish NOWG’s name online. It won’t sound too modest, but I think this is one of the best logos I made to date…
Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? Just pick a subject and say everything you have on the matter, be it a complain or praise. However, it’s not always this simple, especially not when you have to keep up with your online visitors, who don’t really mind weather they would read YOUR blog, or someone else’s, as long as they get access to the information they want. So, how to write a blog entry that would guarantee you will not lose your reader after a few lines and moreover this reader will come back?
Basically, it’s not what you say, it’s HOW you say it. How many times you ended up reading something you have no particular interest in, yet the story was so fascinating and thrilling that you just had to finish reading? I bet at least once it happened to all of us. This happens only when the storyteller not only knows what he is talking about, but also knows how to present his story in the utmost effective way. Your information is a diamond in a rough - know how to polish it til it sparkles and present it like a real jewel.
If you were a good student in your literature class, probably you were taught how to build a written topic. The best way to arise interest in the subject from point zero is to start off by asking a question. By asking a question you automatically force the reader to think of an answer, and if he does not have the answer, what will he do? Exactly, he will read what you have to say about it! On this occasion I’d add that you should avoid banal questions on casual subjects, because if the issue has been milled over hundreds of times before you, no one will have interest in your blog entry. Another good idea for starting a post could be a famous quote (sort of prologue)
So, let’s say you have a killer title and intro, and grabbed the reader by the neck, what’s next? Next, you have to make him keep reading… until the end. This is tricky because from now on it fully depends on your writing skills and writing style. Some people have a talent here, others have to follow simple rules to ensure the blog post is going to be perfect, and believe me, everything is “learnable”, writing skills included.
Read More from "9 rules for writing a *good* blog entry"
I bet Jim Westergren, the famous SEO guru, does not even know that toptut.com secretly competes with him. Of course I don’t, the last thing I need now is overseas enemies, but when this blog was just launched, I made a post about Jim’s SEO services, phrasing his ability to kick any blog to a high rank in SE. After reading his blog and keeping track with what he recommends and suggests (sometimes I just pulled it from the context), in about half a year I am coming close to his ranking, according to Blog Juice calculator…
Sure there is still a long way to go, but looks looks mission impossible is developing a shape and honestly I believe that in 2 more months from now (if I won’t be too lazy to promote) I might even reach the 5,2 rating as well, only hoping (as evil as it sounds, sorry Jim) that Westergren’s blog juice won’t climb higher by then…
There are quite a few ways to ruin a blog. The competition is enormous, there are thousands of better bloggers out there and in order to be read and recommended, you have to beat this competition. However, there are also many ways to unintentionally ruin your blog and the sad thing is, many good bloggers (i.e. informative bloggers who have something to say) do it. The techniques I list below were not tested on toptut.com (nor on animals) but were tested on friends’ blogs and are based on solid theory as well as common sense and logic. Should you decide to watch your blog suffering a slow and painful death, I’d recommend to implement all of the 3 methods for best results. So…
1. Stop updating. You worked hard and added a lot of content already, readers should be grateful you bothered to write all this already. Don’t bother anymore and most important don’t get tempted to post about some new gadgets or upcoming news.
2. Require to register in order to leave a comment. Believe me, your blog’s visitors have no life nor anything better to do than to take the time and register in your blog, then log in every time they re-enter. These are the little hassles that make the surfing experience slower and more annoying, but they’re going to love it. Remember to keep the accounts waiting for manual activation.
3. Animate the dull world. Who will read a boring text against a boring layout? Take example from Las Vegas (biggest world’s ‘wow’ factor) and create your own little “Las Blogas”, — blinking and colourful. Ideally you should add a lot of affiliate banners that promote money making sites (”pay us 20$ and we will pay you 20000$ tomorrow”-style; this would be very much Las Blogas!). The more affiliate banners - the better, but to add some more zest to the design itself, I’d suggest using red font text against black animated background - your readers will sure have their eye sight destroyed, but perhaps it was worth it. The good thing is, if they’d want to complain about it, they can’t - they need to register in order to comment and since your blog will not be updated anymore, you won’t get to activate their account anytime soon. You see, all thought through.
Now, this was a quick “blog terminator” tutorial. Hope it was of use and will help you to achieve the results fast and easy. I’d want to add however, that if you are unwilling to see your blog dying in pain, it could be a good idea to try and avoid all the generously given advices you just read.
I rarely used the liquidify tool in Photoshop, however, recently I noticed that it allows to give some really nice touc-ups to to the image… Here is what liquidify tool, and some other techniques described in “Like in Magazines” tutorial could do with Carmen:
Please full view by clicking on the picture.
The first (left) original image is what I pulled from the internet and it remained intact. Second image went through a small “Photoshop plastic surgery” - enlarging the lips (I know, I overdid it, looks like a horse’s mouth now), bigger eyes - which I was hoping will achieve more of a Barbie effect. Giving the skin a more natural hue, smoothing the skin lightly and applying lighter makeup - light lip gloss and more of a “summer breeze” eye shadows. Result - she looks cheap.
The image on the right does not appear to be any natural, the curly hair looks like a rough drawing, the skin is so smooth so it looks like she was made from a high quality plastic and the nose, which I decided to desize, resulted in loss of proportion. Applying he pinkish lip gloss I think was a rather good idea and despite looking slightly sluttish, it does not look as if it was Photoshoped.
Overall, it’s nothing impressively mind-blowing because I am among those who think Carmen Electra is initially a nice material to work with, and most of my friends who had seen this worked agreed that the Photoshoping was either unnecessarily or “hardly visible“. SO… I did this last one:
Now tell me you still don’t see it was photoshoped!
My other blog, nowg.net, has entered the “I need a new design” contest, for which I need to gather as many votes as possible. I’d be grateful if you could give me a vote and get me closer to an ass-kicking make over of that blog. All you need to do is click below…
First most of us did not know what will be the benefit for us, the simple mortals, after Google has acquired FeedBurner. Only a few weeks has past and the first advantage for the bloggers is that stats has gone free. All you need to do is activate the FeedBurner’s stats and add the small piece of code to your index.php file (detailed instructions are on the website).
Well, at least something positive came out of Google’s monopoly.
